After a pretrial conference on Monday, Indiana County President Judge William Martin yesterday issued a series of rulings in the Charles Cook murder case. Cook is accused of shooting to death 76-year-old Myrtle McGill in 1991 at her home along South 6th Street in Indiana.
Judge Martin has scheduled a hearing on outstanding issues from attorney Robert Manzi Jr.’s omnibus pretrial motions, including a motion to suppress statements made by Cook in March of 2016, after he was taken into custody. The first of those statements was recorded and videotaped while Cook was incarcerated in Minnesota. The second statement was taken the next day at a Walmart store, also in Minnesota.
Another defense motion on which Martin must rule is a motion to dismiss the case because of a violation of due process rights, based on the lengthy delay between 2007, when his DNA was discovered on a cigarette butt found in the victim’s car, and the time of his arrest in 2016.
Manzi has also asked the court to suppress the DNA swabs taken from Cook and certain photographs, and he’s also asked the judge to exclude any references to lost evidence taken from Cook when he was arrested in Montana in December of 1991, just three days after McGill’s murder.
Judge Martin also ordered the defense and prosecution to work together to allow Manzi to view the cigarette butt on which Cook’s DNA was found.
Martin plans to hold another pretrial conference, but has not yet scheduled it. No trial date has been set.
